Drawing from her national best-selling book Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment, Rhae Lynn Barnes will explore the complex intersections of disability, presidential power, and racial masquerade. She will examine how minstrelsy and the dark cast of blackface performance functioned both as cultural entertainment and a political prosthetic during the Roosevelt era, masking the physical vulnerability of white children with polio while reinforcing racial hierarchies. Dr. Rhae Lynn Barnes is Assistant Professor of ...